


From Gehenna

by spinbrarian (Alvilda_Apocrypha)



Category: Final Fantasy XV
Genre: Aftermath of Torture, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Blood and Gore, But Spoilers Ahoy, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Medical Torture, No Ships Sail Here, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Slow To Update, briefly, possibly
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-01-29
Updated: 2018-02-25
Packaged: 2019-03-10 23:17:12
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 6,254
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13511814
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Alvilda_Apocrypha/pseuds/spinbrarian
Summary: In M.E. 736, a young Cor Leonis rescues not one but two sorry souls from Verstael Besithia's labs in Nifleheim, and from that point on the future of Eos begins to shift.This is an AU, but it includes spoilers up to Episode Prompto.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Hi there! Thanks for clicking in. 
> 
> This story got its start as a kinkmeme fill that both needed work and very rapidly veered away from what op wanted, so I decided to move it here to become its own thing. Fortunately, there's another very lovely fic already on AO3 that did a much better job of being an actual fill with lots of Ardyn/Cor/Prompto goodness.
> 
> If I'm counting right, Cor's 25 at the beginning of this story.
> 
> AU rules of the road:  
> \- Potions and such exist but are quite a bit rarer and not as effective. Pheonix downs are pretty much like a fantasy version of an AED, if you happen to get one fast enough to use it.  
> \- Ardyn did not escape from Angelgard under his own power, and he's come through it a little differently than what we got in the game...
> 
> Updates will probably be slow, but I have a really long plot outline. The second chapter, at least, should be out shortly. Fingers crossed!
> 
> This is only my second fanfic, so feedback is love :)

**M.E. 736**

Two years and seven months after he joined the Imperial Army, flashing forged papers and a scowl that dissuaded all but the most routine questions about his origins and qualifications, Cor Leonis finally made his move.

The generator was burning. The raging fire had already consumed half of the power station and, judging from the high winter winds whipping gusts of flame into the air, it was terribly close to spreading across the base. Most of the soldiers who were unlucky enough to have pulled holiday duty on the Emporer's birthday had rushed to answer the wailing sirens, alone with most of the active Magitek Trooper units -fodder for the human soldiers’ orders. MTs could stand hotter temperatures than humans could before they stopped functioning, and they could be replaced more easily, too. This facility alone sent a score of train cars to Gralea each month, stacked to the top with new units. It was twice the rate of six months ago.

Cor, who just _happened_ to be left behind to guard the entrance to the now-dark Magitek production building, tapped a cigarette out of its packet. He stared into the distant glare of the fire, watching as an explosion blew out the side of the generator building, sending dark figures flying. Men or MTs, they were too far away to judge. He whistled softly through his teeth.

“’Stopping it’s gonna be a close thing,” he growled, slipping the unlit cigarette between his lips. He shook another free, handing it to the only other soldier left guarding the doors. “Got a light, Marcus?”

“Thanks, sir. Besithia’s gonna be _pissed!_ ” Marcus took the offered cigarette, and as the young guard twisted to search his pockets, Cor quietly slipped his Nifleheim-issued shock baton from its strap, flicked it on, and jammed it into the older man’s neck. He caught the young soldier as he collapsed, then turned toward the doors behind them.

As Cor pulled Marcus’ unwieldy body through the entrance into the dim red emergency lighting, six MTs turned to watch, their glowing eyes drinking in the prone man and the soldier dragging him. A warning tone started from the one closest to the men, rising in pitch, and Cor let Marcus slump down as he raised his hands, palms out. He glanced quickly at the barcode on the closest MT’s chest.

“GL-001245, you are ordered to stand down, authorization VB2-094P.” Cor spoke firmly and clearly, putting _command_ in his voice, glaring straight into the inhuman eyes. He knew his words were being recorded. Six willing, the tapes wouldn’t be reviewed until after he’d left the base long behind. “I have a wounded soldier here. He’s being transported inside for medical treatment. Your unit will guard the entrance. Move!”

Soft skittering noises passed between the MTs for a moment, and then they turned as a whole to march away as ordered. Cor exhaled only after he heard the door slam, cutting off the mechanical scraping and clanking of the machines. Even as practiced at close contact as he’d become, his chest still clenched whenever he had to speak to an MT. They were too often in his dreams, shrieking and charging forward in unending waves. They _died_ easy enough, if you could call dissolving into black smoke death, but they never stopped coming.

Shivering, he clicked on a flashlight and stuck the end between his teeth, then hoisted Marcus into his arms and carried him into the nearest bunkroom. He dropped him on a bed, ripped up a sheet for a gag, and pulled off the boy’ own belt to bind his wrists and ankles together around the bunk post. Hopefully, he wouldn’t regret leaving the kid alive. Pulling the door securely closed, Cor wasted a precious moment to take a deep breath and settle himself on tonight’s task. He shook out his arms, trying to shed his nervous energy. _Time to move._

Cor been carefully gathering data on Niflheim's military operations since enlisting, taking care to cultivate a perfectly unimpeachable, if also unremarkable, reputation. Once he’d gotten himself transferred out to the First Magitek Production Facility, he’d spent most of his time surreptitiously documenting the base and piecing together how the damned machines were built, but soldiers were never assigned to any but the low and medium-security areas. He’d spent endless shifts in the factory, watching the armor assembly, lightproof shells fixed over metal joints by already-built MTs, but the Magitek cores that brought the shells to unnatural life were still a mystery. The other soldiers didn’t know, and the scientists weren’t talking. Cor felt like he’d learned almost nothing, and the frustration gnawed at him. Tonight though, he intended to find what he’d come for. He would make a sweep of the Keep's research unit, that great hulking building that clung to the cliff behind the factory, and then he would run for Lucis, as fast as he could. A truck was loaded in the yard, ready for his last trip. If his luck held, he would be clear of the base by midnight and outside of Niflheim’s borders within two weeks.

Most of the cavernous rooms Cor sprinted through were empty, the production process halted for the holidays, save ranks of inactive MTs that had probably been interrupted in the middle of their charging cycle. He spared these hardly a glance, though their sheer numbers and what that promised for Lucis weighed on his mind; he only wanted to reach Besithia’s laboratories. With both the freight and personnel elevators out of commission, Cor spent precious time running through endless halls, up and down too many astrals-damned flights of stairs, until he finally burst out the rear exit of the factory and the research building towered in front of him.

A badge he’d filched six months ago from a high-ranking general on an inspection tour from Gralea got him in, Cor impatiently ducked under the low-power emergency access door before it was fully open. _This_ building he’d never been inside – _this_ should be the jackpot that made everything worth it.

The first dozen rooms were small offices, and Cor slipped into several, but he couldn’t access the powered-down workstations. He could, however, pull the magnetic data reels off the dark hulking computers that lined the walls and drop them unceremoniously into his own pocket of the armiger, along with whatever folders, report, and stack of papers he came across. Nifs were certainly advanced in some areas of tech, but for whatever reason they'd lagged sorely behind in modern computing. Hopefully he was getting _something_ important. He certainly didn't have time to sit in the dark and peruse papers to decide what might be useful.  

_I hope Clarus enjoys filing. I hope at least half of this is maintenance reports. Three years, Regis!_

Cor, of course, did not expect to be joining that filing. Cor expected to be at Galdin Quay catching up on several months of leave, as soon as he could finish delivering the material and debriefing. He picked up one last handful of folders, dismissed them in a small shower of blue sparks, and checked his watch, wondering how the progress against the fire was going.

_I’ve got to find the labs._

Finally, after what seemed like far too much time wasted running through offices, Cor reached what could only be the path to his target. A great round armored door loomed over him, obviously _Very Important_ , and Cor grinned as he swiped the ill-gotten badge through the access reader. A small bulb lit green, and he heard locks clicking open before the door slid smoothly open.

Light spilled up the hallway beyond, and Cor knew he’d found what he was looking for. There was a backup generator in use here. He loped down the hallway as fast as he could, catching himself up short to fling open the door to the first brightly-illuminated room.

It’d been better not to know. Rows upon rows of clouded tubes stretched through a vast hall, the condensation lining the glass doing little to hide the human forms suspended therein. Every one was the same: young, thin, pale, with delicate, identical features. Every one was utterly motionless in a slowly swirling suspension of blue liquid and dark fog. Rapping on the glass of one of the tubes elicited no response at all. They didn’t seem _alive_. Cor pulled his camera out of the armiger, and started snapping pictures. He calculated quickly; there must be over two thousand of them, stretching away into this warehouse of bodies.

There were three more vast halls filled with capsules; in each, the bodies were the same, but they were _younger_ , some looking no older than a few years. Cor closed the final door quietly, and turned to climb the stairs at the end of the long hall. Cor still couldn't say _exactly_  how these endless identical men were involved in Magitek production, ending as it did in smoke-filled, un-alive armor, but he didn't have time to think through it now; he just set those troubling thoughts aside and moved on.

He knew as soon as he reached the next level that he’d found Besithia’s personal domain; the nameplate by the door told him that much. The contents of the first room itself were mostly unexceptional – practically anticlimactic. It was another office, though more well-appointed than the others, and Cor consoled himself by stealing every scrap of paper in sight.

At the rear of Besithia’s office, separated by heavy glass partition, was a smaller room. It was hardly ten feet on a side, the left and right walls busy with cabinets, deep sinks, racks of white coats and rubber aprons, and a hatch marked _INCINERATOR._

On the back wall stood three heavy doors. They reminded Cor of the vaults guarding the weapons in Insomnia’s strongest caches, red-and-black painted steel hung in a heavy frames – the most color Cor had seen in this dismal place - with a manual wheels set in the center. He felt just a little ridiculous, choosing a door, so he simply started on the left. The wheel was well-oiled, and well-used, the paint rubbed to cold bare steel on the spokes. The door’s steel rods drew back into the frame with hardly a sound. Taking the warnings to heart, Cor drew his sword before pulling the door open. It moved as if hung on air.

That first room was almost unexceptional, but Cor summoned his camera and took pictures anyway. It was a large, almost-bare oval room with a sunken center, empty metal gurneys cluttered at one side. The oddest feature of the room was the high, domed ceiling, mounted with clusters of dark cylinders that clung like stalactites. A railing guarded a ring of chairs around the room’s upper level, and an elevator – large enough to accommodate several gurneys – proved to lead down to the hall holding the oldest-seeming bodies.

The second room looked, to Cor, like a match of the first, but it was anything but empty. The ceiling here was alive with light, the mysterious cylinders flashing in turn. As they lit up, they gave off a series of hums so low Cor could feel it in his bones, almost aching with his first foot in the door. The sunken center of the room, so bare in the first chamber, was crowded beyond reason, carts clustered in corners between unidentifiable instruments and heavy machines, blinking or chirping, rolling cabinets parked haphazardly throughout.

In the middle of it all was a stainless steel table, atop which he could see a body – _part_ of a body - so covered in wires and tubing and that the naked form was hardly visible.

Then his mind registered how _black_ the blood pooled under the body was, and Cor the Immortal almost turned tail and ran.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I screwed around with the layout of the MT facility, so things aren't quite laid out as they are when you play Episode Prompto. Some things surely changed over the years - or at least that's my excuse and I'm sticking to it! At the very least they ramped up security after Cor's escapades... there's even a note in Ep Prompto that mentions putting MTs to work guarding the facility.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In which an overwhelmed Cor cultivates a little trauma and jumps to several incorrect conclusions.

_Only almost_ , though it was closer than he'd ever come. Cor growled in disgust at himself, once the moment had passed, and he forced his clenched fists open. There'd been no sign of hazmat equipment, only aprons and long gloves. Either Besithia was extremely reckless in dealing with the scourge, or he’d determined that the risk of airborne infection was negligible. Cor filed that fact away; it was more than they knew back home in Lucis. All the same, he searched out a box of gloves and pulled a pair on before turning back to the table.

Cor had seen plenty of death in the service of Lucis. He’d watched Nifs fall dead at arm’s length, cut open by his own blade, held the hands of boys bleeding out who didn’t even know they were corpses yet, and scoured old battlefields to recovered the bloated and torn bodies of his comrades. The ruin on the table should’ve been among those dead, but there was no reason to intubate a dead man, to feed IVs into him, or to bandage his eyes. No reason for the steady beeps and dancing lines of a vitals monitor.

_At the very least he’s unconscious. Hasn’t moved since I came in, and I haven’t been quiet about it. Brain dead, probably._

Cor sucked in a deep breath, and lifted his camera.

New film, check the flash.

_This won't bother him, then._

Cor started shooting.

Wide views of the room first, delaying for a few dear moments a closer examination of the man on the table, but then there was nothing left but the subject at hand.

Most of the body was missing. There was _nothing_ from the belly down, unnaturally dark organs and intestines spilling out of what remained of the torso in heaps, shielded from the air by clear plastic film stretched over the table, shiny with moisture. Oddly, distressingly, the man wasn’t bleeding; only black fluid seeped from the gaping body. The viscera _moved_ as the man breathed, slow and mechanical on the ventilator, and Cor felt the burning of bile in his throat. He looked to what was left instead.

The man’s black-streaked skin was the mottled color of a corpse gone bad, and dark ichor leaked from every wound. Scourge, obviously, but so far past the terminal state it looked as if there were more disease than man. His chest was covered in electrodes and what were probably more sensors. Underneath, a bright scar ran down the sternum, crossing older, faded lines, and another wandered from shoulder to elbow on the one outstretched arm. That arm was strapped down with leather bands, IV lines taped at the elbow. Cor checked the bags. The man had to be drugged out of whatever mind he had left. _Bless the six for the poor bastard’s sake._

Cor circled the table. The right arm had been wholly removed at the shoulder joint, and this wound too was open and raw, feeding lines that trailed across the table to disappear into a nearby machine, one black and one deep ruby. The shaved skull was cut open, probes sunk directly into exposed brain matter. Black seeped from under the bandages covering his eyes, and leaked around his lips, staining around the tubes filling his mouth.

_Who is he? Who_ was _he, before they brought him here?_

With luck, the answers were in Besithia’s files. There must be a reason for keeping such a wretch alive long enough to do this to him. Cor only hoped that there weren’t more men who had found their end like this. He took one last shot, maneuvering in the cluttered space to get the entire body in the frame. It was past time to make his exit, and there was still the last reinforced door to check. Still, there were two tasks he felt pressed to see through before he left this room behind. _Curiosity first._  With a tickle of guilt, he summoned a long, thin dagger and returned to the head of the table. Slowly, carefully, he edged the tip of the blade under the bandages that covered the man’s eyes, and cut them free.

The eyes – they were open, saturated with that awful ichor, the irises an unnatural, gleaming yellow, and Cor knew why the Nifs had kept the bandages on. They were the eyes of a monster, and they stared straight at him, very much awake.

Cor backed away quickly, unable to tear his own gaze away, until he caught up against an open cabinet, almost losing his balance. Glass containers shifted under his weight, and fell, shattering on the floor, saturating his pants and splashing an all-too-familiar deathly black liquid onto him.

 "Six! Oh, astrals!"

The fluid slipped under his boots as Cor ran from the room and slid through the door, throwing himself to a sink to heave his stomach dry. Still hacking, he tore at his Nifleheim soldier’s uniform, flinging everything in a corner, and he scrubbed harsh soap into his skin until every spot of black was gone and his skin was red and raw. Then he sank to the floor, looked down at himself, and laughed. He hardly recognized his own voice.

\----

The last lab was full of babies. Dozens of babies, unnaturally silent and still in plastic cribs. They were whole, but each had almost as many wires and sensors as that scourge-infected horror, and several sported IV bags dripping scourge ichor straight into their veins.

_The bastards are infecting babies on purpose? What the hell for?_

Cor walked down the first row of cribs. The babies were as identical as the bodies in the tubes, and Cor had his answer. Of the infants, only one seemed to notice him, reaching out a chubby arm. Cor's vision swam, and he tasted blood. He looked down; he'd bitten his hand hard enough to break the skin.

This was too much. He crossed off a thousand ways to save them all, each more foolhardy than the last. You couldn't put _babies_ in the armiger. Nothing _alive_.

_I can save at least one_.

Mind resolved, Cor turned to the room's cabinets for supplies, sending everything he touched into the armiger. The room was stocked almost as if it were a normal nursery. _Diapers. Formula. Bottles. Towels. Antiseptic. Whatever the hell's in these boxes._

There was no easy answer on which baby to save, no choice that would allay the heaviness in his soul, so Cor went to the infant that had reached for him, peeling electrodes from delicate skin, pressing gauze to the baby's scalp to pull out the IV port, averting his gaze from the soft blue eyes brimming with tears.

He picked the baby up, froze for a moment, and put it back down. And Cor, short of time as he was, managed to fumble his way through changing his first dirty diaper.

_You're lucky, kid, that my stomach's already empty._

Fighting disgust and an overwhelming sense of relief that he'd never had time to become a parent, Cor pulled the sheet covering the crib's thin mattress up and tied it into a sling to cradle the baby tight against his chest over an unstained shirt he'd pulled from the armiger.

Tugging the knots to make sure they were secure, Cor took one last look around at the rows of babies, and he felt his heart break.

"I'm so sorry."

\----

Cor slowed as he left the nursery, hesitating for just a moment before he reentered the second room. His earlier panic had stilled, and though he couldn't save the man on the table, he could at least grant him the final mercy he’d intended. He untied the sling and situated the babe on the floor, just inside the door.

"Wait here for me, OK?"

The kid just looked at him. Feeling awkward, Cor gave a little wave of his fingers, then shrugged and turned away. He approached the table even more slowly this time, edging carefully around the drying sludge on the floor, and grabbing more gloves and pulling them on. Those yellow eyes moved to follow his every step. Cor tried to keep his own eyes on the man’s face, avoiding the wreckage spread out further down the table.

When Cor reached him, holding up his hands to show he meant no harm, the man’s brows knit, and tried to turn his head away. It was the first movement he’d made save the shifting of his gaze, but it was in vain. His head was strapped firmly in place. He closed his eyes instead.

“Why are you in here? _BACK AWAY NOW! I’ve got a gun!”_

Cor spun around just a white-coated man punched a red trigger mounted near the entrance, one hand holding a shaky gun out toward Cor as the steel door slammed shut behind him. Cor dropped to the floor, summoned the gun Regis was forever insisting he needed, and shot the man in the forehead. He fell dead at the feet of the unnoticed infant.

The first thing Cor had learned was to never hesitate.

He dismissed his gun. Still, it was too late. Whatever dormant MTs were in this building would be activating, fully charged or not, and they would be here soon. Even if Cor could get the door open, he’d be walking straight into an ambush.

Sighing, Cor pushed himself to his feet, looking back to what he came to do. Those eerie eyes were back open, searching Cor’s face, confusion writ plain even through the seeping ichor. Cor spoke, in the language of the Empire, as gently as he could.

"I’m going to end this. I can make it quick."

The man squinted at him, and looked away. Cor tried again in Lucian. Not a flicker to indicate he’d been understood, but Cor didn't have time. If the gods had any mercy, the man would die on his own very soon, but that was a slower pain than Cor was wont to allow. Thinking of the dying soldiers he'd comforted in Accordo, he reached out to touch the man's forearm. Human contact often meant more than words, in extremity. He moved to lace the gloved fingers of his left hand through the man's own, summoned a long dagger behind his back, and brought it around, miming striking at his own heart.

After a long pause, the man gave the tiniest squeeze to Cor’s fingers, and his yellow eyes slid closed one final time.

In seconds, it was done. The man's eyelids fluttered, but he made no sound apart from a small grunt as the knife found his heart.

_Be at peace._

He watched for a moment in silence after the man's breathing stopped, to honor this stranger with the ravaged body, then withdrew the blade. The machines around them began to wail softly in protest, and at the same time the deep humming pulses from the cylinders on the ceiling faded. He flexed his fingers to pull away his hand away _and as he did the body jerked,_ and Cor’s hand was suddenly caught in an iron grip. The knife fell loud to the floor, loud as a thunderclap, and skittered away.

Cor pulled, _hard_ , but he couldn't break free. The body jerked again, and black motes began seeping like gritty smoke from the man's skin. They bunched thickest at the stab wound and the dissected arm and belly, flowing in masses across the table, bunching up in mounds. Cor felt a sickening, shifting cold where they touched his gloved hand.

Almost as quickly as they’d appeared, the motes dispersed, seeping back 'til nothing remained, and when they had gone the man started to gasp, chest heaving, convulsing as if he were in terrible pain. His open wounds had healed into shiny scars, mottled in black, and the right arm and lower body had reformed itself from nothing, tubing and wires falling loosely to the floor, severed cleanly where new flesh, as pale and black-streaked as the old, now lay.

The columns on the ceiling lit up all at once with a deafening vibration, and the man's body arched.

"What the hell are you?" Cor whispered.

There were no stories or rumors of the scourge healing its victims. This man... was his strange scourge the product of Nif experimentation? Were they trying to bend the disease to military use? Cor envisioned hordes of Nif soldiers, rising up from whence they'd fallen. Were there more like him, locked away in other labs? Were those babies grown into men in the tubes to be the next horror, to put the nightmare of the MTs to shame? Even _Regis_ couldn't resist an unkillable enemy.

His mind fell upon another horror, and held fast to it: what if the scourge itself was a byproduct of the experiments conducted here?

A heavy thud sounded through the door, and Cor made several very poor decisions in the space of a heartbeat.

He leaned down to grab the knife, and started cutting through straps.

_You're going to get yourself killed. The mission will be wasted!_

He shoved the thought back to a corner of his mind. The mission had just added a new objective. He’d probably be dead within the hour, anyway, if the gods abandoned him in the next few minutes.

_Bahamut save me. I'll rethink my impulsive decisions LATER, Clarus._

Cor had long ago given a name to that particular nagging bit of conscience.

He sliced through the last strap and dismissed the knife. The man's eyes were screwed shut, his lips twisted in a grimace.

"Hey. I’m getting you out of here," and even as Cor was said it, he was thinking, _oh astrals,_ "you're coming with me."

Another thud. Whoever had the door overrides was apparently still fighting the fire.

He patted the man's face, and again, a little harder, until he saw a sliver of yellow. Cor held up the hand the man still gripped, showing him his own arm pulled free from its bonds. The yellow eyes grew wider.

"Yeah. Would you let go of my hand for a minute?" He pried at the fingers holding his, and was relieved when the man released his grip. He started pulling off wires and sensors and tubes from the man’s chest, less gently than he had with the baby. Thinking wryly back on how reluctantly, and how often, he’d been pulled into assisting as an amateur medic’s assistant in Accordo, Cor steeled himself and did the quickest job he could of extubating the man. _That_ earned him a glare, as the man gagged and coughed.

"Quid facis?" The man's voice was a rasp, and he spoke through labored breaths. "Neque tu times?'

Cor laid a hand on the man's shoulder.

"All right, we're going to get you up. Come on."

Cor pulled up on the man's shoulder, trying to ignore that it was soaked in wet blackness, and the man seemed to understand, straining to raise himself just enough for Cor to get an arm under his back.

_It's already been all over me. I'm already exposed. So's the kid. Huh. Maybe I'll come back to life when they catch us and shoot me._

He lifted the man, helping him sit up and swing his legs off the table, trying not to notice how close to dead weight he was.

"Stay here. I'll be right back."

Not waiting for an answer, Cor dashed away. A quiet voice followed him, full of confusion: "Nescio."

Back at the door, the baby had managed to roll out of his sheets. Cor stepped around the dead man and scooped him back into place, then hitched the makeshift sling around his chest.

"Ready to go, kid?"

_Now or never_.

He rushed back into the lab, ignoring the pointed stare the man gave the sling. Without a word -- because what was the point? -- Cor pulled the man's arm over his own shoulders and reached an arm behind his back, tugging him forward, supporting his weight as it dropped to the floor.

Cor moved one foot forward, and the man took a trembling step. _Too slow._ They walked three more before his legs collapsed, and Cor was almost pulled down on top of him.

"Discede. Ego quoque infirmi." He pushed away from Cor. Some things were easy to understand.

“I don’t think so.”

"Discede!" The man's voice broke, and he seemed to fold in on himself, pulling out of Cor’s grip. _This is ridiculous._ Cor grimaced, and knelt, grabbing ahold of the man's unresisting left arm and pulling it over his own shoulder, then clasping the forearm. He'd just carry the man, too. It would be awkward, with the baby, but they weren't going far. Not yet. He rose to a crouch, reached back to find the man's thigh, and hitched him halfway into place.

_"Astrals,_ you've got to at least hang on!"

He stood the rest of the way, off balance, and finally the man seemed to come aware again, wrapping his other arm around the Marshal's neck. Cor let go to grab his other leg.

_I feel like an overloaded chocobo._

They made it to the raised perimeter of the room, and Cor squatted behind the row of workstations. Shifting the man's weight to one side, he reached into the armiger and pulled out a flask of firaga. It was the first magic he'd retrieved since reaching Niflheim. He was too rusty for this.

_No time for second thoughts._

He threw the flask, aiming for the far wall, grabbed again at the man's arm, and ducked back just as the flames burst out. He counted to three, and raced through the wreckage of the burning lab toward the hole he'd blown in the wall, nothing but the blacked-out winter sky beyond.

He thought he the man scream something, or it might have been the MTs, or it might even have been himself.

Cor reached the edge, and jumped into the night.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "Slow to update" still applies, but this second chapter was mostly done already :)
> 
> To anyone who knows anything about Latin at all, forgive me.
> 
> Thank you for reading! Feedback is most welcome!


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm sorry this is so short! Hopefully the next one will be a little lengthier :)

They snapped back into reality in a shower of sparks, collapsing into a tangle of limbs and snow and rocks as Cor’s ankle twisted and snapped under him. _Alive._ They’d fallen _so fast,_ dark masses of rock speeding at them, and he’d flung his dagger wildly down into the dark of the valley, praying he remembered how to _pull_.

He’d tried to learn from Regis, pressuring the prince to help him learn, but after losing his lunch - and his dignity - one too many times, Cor stopped trying, not wanting to give Cid any more reason to laugh at him.

The baby started to wail, protesting the harsh jostling, and Cor wrapped his arms around the bundle, drawing it against his racing heart. _Alive._ Cor opened his eyes, looking back up at the sky. It was as if the stars were spinning. He squeezed them shut again.

"Stulte!"

 It was spoken like a curse, close to his ear. _Alive._ Cor counted between his breaths, forcing them to slow.

“ _Stulte_.”

Quieter this time; a breeze of a laugh fluttered in his hair. A hand reached up to brush Cor’s forehead, and he turned his head into the cool touch, letting it ground him.

“Placet mihi.”

It was a whisper, and the man’s hand fell away.

When the world stopped moving, Cor pulled himself out of the man’s arms, tucked and arm around the baby’s sling, and rolled to a sitting position in the snow. He hissed at the pain in his left ankle, and took a moment to break an elixir directly over it. The pain faded to an aching throb as the bones started to knit. He stretched, experimentally, and winced. His other bruises and scrapes would mend themselves, given time, and weren’t worth either his second elixir or one of his potions.

Praying that no one was looking down from the hole he’d blown in the wall, Cor clicked his flashlight on and shone it around. They’d tumbled into a snowbank, blown deep against the rocky side of the hill. Fifteen feet from where he sat, the craggy ground fell away, plunging deeper into the dark chasm of the valley. He looked up, and couldn’t see the lab; his blade must’ve fallen quite a way. All the same, they were exposed on the ledge, and it would be too easy to notice his light. He clicked it off. The moon was full, though dimmed by smoke; it would have to be enough.

Cor tugged the knotted sheet over his head and pulled the little boy free, settled him awkwardly into the crook of one arm. The baby’s bright blue eyes brimmed with tears under a dusting of mussed blond hair, glaring accusingly at him past a runny nose turned red from cold. They were in trouble if the baby kept crying, his wails a beacon in the night.

“ _Shhh_. Don’t cry, kid, please. _Please_ be quiet, kid. Look, here’s… uh… ” Cor fumbled, not having anything to actually give the baby. He patted the boy awkwardly. _Every_ baby Cor had ever somehow ended up holding cried, though usually they didn’t have as good of a reason. He frantically filed through every bit of junk he could remember stuffing in the armiger, until he noticed that, quite astonishingly, the baby was settling by itself. He’d managed to grab Cor’s finger, and had pulled it to his mouth, gnawing at his rough skin with sharp little teeth.

“Hey. You don’t know where that’s been.” Cor pulled his hand away, smoothing down the boy’s fine blond hair instead, and he noticed, for the first time, a barcode on the boy’s wrist. It didn’t wipe away when Cor rubbed at it with his thumb.

“I wonder what they’ve done to you that I can’t see.”

Images of the lab – of other babies – flashed into his mind, and Cor pushed them sharply back. _Not right now._ The baby caught at Cor’s finger again. _Somewhere between growing a couple of teeth and talking?_ _How old is that? Younger than Clarus’ kid was when I left._

The baby yawned, and hiccupped, and Cor allowed himself a small smile. The kid was cute. He held him for a few minutes more, and the baby’s eyelids started to droop. Cor wrapped the sheet more tightly around the drowsy baby and set him gently on the snow.

Cor turned back to check on his other stolen captive. The man was curled on his side, shivering, clouds of white puffing between his lips. He still seemed a grotesquerie, all mottled, pale skin marred with scars and scourge stuff. There was no response when Cor shook his shoulder, so he instead pushed himself to his feet, summoned a sleeping bag to spread open, and rolled the still-unconscious man onto it. He zipped the bag around the shivering form, and limping and cursing under his breath all the while, dragged it toward the lee of a snow-capped tumble of rocks under a stand of twisted pines. It was poor concealment, though a better spot than the open ground, and it should help to break the bitter wind.

The baby went into the sleeping bag next to the man, and Cor tugged the fabric close around them both. Sitting back against the trunk of one of the pines, he drew forth a flask of fire, weaker than the magic he’d used before. Wedging the tip of his dagger into the seal of the fragile bottle, he twisted the blade carefully until it broke loose. Cracked open like this, it would spill out a softly-glowing heat for many hours.

_I could get out with the baby. The truck’s gotta still be there, right where I left it. I could leave clothes, the bag, even my other elixir… the dagger. He’d have a chance._

Cor knew he was lying to himself even as he thought it.

\---

The trek back to the south end of the base seemed to take forever, every step on the uneven terrain more excruciating than the last. Staying well below view, Cor cut across the side of the hill, scrambling over rocks and tramping through snow.

It seemed an age before he rounded the corner of the production facility, and he leaned against the wall to rest for a moment. In the distance, the flames burned lower now, and the silhouetted figures seemed ordered rather than panicked. He was running out of time.

There were now eight MTs clustered at the door, whether summoned from the fire or awakened by the alarm in the research building he didn’t know. With them stood Marcus, gesturing animatedly with a flashlight, his back to his former partner. Cor looked down at himself, grimaced at his general state, and walked straight up to the soldier and MTs.

“Hello, Marcus.”

He spoke casually, but as soon as the words had left his lips, the younger man spun about, gun drawn. Cor held up his hands and stopped approaching.

“Caius! What the hell’s going on, Caius? You should be dead, but here you are. These two,” he tipped his head back, but the MTs were all the same, “found me, yelling for help. We searched for you, and when we got to the lab, they forced the door open.” Marcus kept the beam of the flashlight pointed straight at Cor’s face. “We watched you jump.”

Marcus took a deep breath, and lowered the flashlight slightly, angling it out of Cor’s eyes. “I’m giving you a chance to answer… because you’re obviously a traitor, but you only zapped the hell out of me when you decided to go rogue. And,” he hesitated again, “‘cause I don’t understand what I saw in there.”


End file.
